How to Use Excel to Compare RFP Responses (The Smart Way)

TL;DR:,

Excel is essential for decision-making but terrible for manual text processing. Stop manually copy-pasting proposal data into spreadsheets. Instead, use an AI analysis layer to automatically score and rank proposals, then export the structured data to Excel. This approach reduces review time by up to 60%, eliminates "spreadsheet hell," and turns subjective opinions into defensible, data-backed decisions.

If you work in procurement or proposal management, the question "How can I use Excel to compare RFP responses?" usually has a simple answer: You open a blank sheet, create columns for vendors, rows for requirements, and then prepare for a headache.

Spreadsheets are ubiquitous in acquisition organizations. They are cheap, fast, portable, and - most importantly - everyone already knows how to use them. However, while tools like Excel or Google Sheets are the tool most teams ultimately use to make decisions, it is often the wrong tool for processing the complex text found in proposals.

Here is a look at why manual Excel comparison fails and how to transform your workflow by automating the analysis layer.

The Problem: Spreadsheets are Built for Numbers, Not Text

The fundamental struggle with using Excel for RFP comparison is that it is designed for structured data (numbers), while proposals are composed of fluid, contextual language. When you try to force long-form text into a grid, you encounter the "mismatch of text and tables":

The "Data Prison": A spreadsheet cell is designed to hold a variable, like a price or a date. When you paste paragraphs of legal clauses or technical specs into a cell, the content becomes isolated, destroying the flow necessary for understanding context.
The "Wrap Text" Dilemma: To make text visible, you have to use the "Wrap Text" feature. This causes rows to expand unpredictably, destroying the uniform grid structure and turning your review into a "tedious scroll-fest".
Lack of Semantic Analysis: Excel’s functions (SUM, AVERAGE, VLOOKUP) are mathematical. They cannot perform semantic analysis to understand the intent behind a vendor’s words. A formula cannot tell you if a vendor’s response is "compliant," "subjective," or "needs negotiation". Human interpretation is required - they have the final say. However, BidHawk AI can significantly reduce the identification and review workload by providing contextually relevant connections between requirements and proposed solutions.

The Better Way: Automated AI-Powered Proposal Scoring and Ranking

You don't need to abandon spreadsheets; you need to change how you populate them. The most effective way to use spreadsheets for RFP proposal comparisons is to use BidHawk.ai to generate the data for you.

BidHawk AI acts as a "Digital Subject Matter Expert," enabling you to drag-and-drop proposals and RFP requirements documents to automatically analyze, compare, and score them. Instead of manual entry, the system:

Automatically reviews, scores, and ranks proposals: BidHawk AI evaluates submissions against your specific requirements rather than relying on generic templates or individual interpretations that need deconflicted via endless meetings.
Visualizes the data: Multiple proposal comparisons are plotted graphically in BidHawk AI and made available for export via PDF and Excel Comma Separated Value (CSV) files. This data highlights individual proposal compliance and likelihood of success against your requirements document(s). BidHawk AI data can be loaded into your favorite spreadsheet to provide a foundation for discussion and continued analysis - saving days of manual entry. You can generate your own visualizations from the exported data or the modified data as your review process moves forward.
Classifies the results: The comparison plot clearly and visually classifies proposals as selectable, short list, acceptable, or not acceptable. This data is also included in your CSV exports so that you can more easily collaborate on them in your spreadsheet (individually or as a team).

Real-World Examples: From Spreadsheet Hell to AI Analysis

To understand the difference this approach makes, consider these three common scenarios where shifting from manual entry to automated analysis saves the day:

1. The "Needle in the Haystack": Shortlisting 25 Proposals

The Pain: A buying team receives 25 vendor proposals for a single RFP. Manually reading, tagging, and scoring these in Excel typically takes 3-4 weeks. The volume of text leads to reviewer fatigue, increasing the risk that a good vendor is missed or a bad one slips through.

The Solution: By uploading the RFP and all 25 proposals into BidHawk AI, the team generates a ranked list and compliance overview in minutes. They can shortlist the top 5-7 candidates immediately based on data, focusing their human effort only on the most viable options. BidHawk AI also generates the details for the lesser compliant proposals so you can verify, document, and defend leadership and team decisions with confidence.

2. The "Subjectivity Trap": Defending Your Choice

The Pain: An evaluation committee sits down to select a winner, but the conversation devolves into emotional debates. Without structured data, it is difficult to justify why one vendor was chosen over another to leadership or auditors.

The Solution: Using the BidHawk AI exports, the team enters review meetings with a structured, side-by-side comparison of how each vendor addressed every requirement. The discussion shifts from "Who do we like?" to "Do we agree with the data?" creating an audit-ready trail of compliance and scoring justifications. This is important to engage sooner than later - BidHawk AI reports can help focus the team on the most important areas quickly, while establishing a framework of reporting by the review and leadership teams. BidHawk AI reports help set an expectation for feedback quality that is often missing by just handing a stack of documents for review and hoping that people provide the relevant information to make decisions. “Yes” or “No” compliance interpretation is not enough when you need to justify “why” - BidHawk AI helps identify the “why” and set an example for what “why” looks like across your teams reviewing vendor proposals.

3. The "Hidden Gap": Ensuring Complete Compliance

The Pain: Dense RFPs and diverse proposal formats make it easy to miss a single "must-have" requirement across hundreds of pages. Manual checklists depend entirely on human stamina, which fades under time pressure.

The Solution: The AI explicitly flags gaps where a vendor failed to address a requirement or provided a subjective answer. The system tags responses as "Compliant," "Needs Negotiation," “Subjective,” or "Non-Compliant," effectively creating a risk heatmap that ensures no requirement goes unseen - and helping to ensure that the key points are reviewed and discussed.

Replace Manual Proposal Comparison Spreadsheets

By shifting the heavy lifting to AI, you can replace manual proposal comparison spreadsheets with data-backed exports. BidHawk AI analysis results are downloadable as CSV files that can be simply loaded into your company's shared environments and collaborated on immediately in your spreadsheet of choice (Excel, Google Sheets, etc.). Contextually relevant information is the most important - without it bad decisions are more guaranteed.

BidHawk AI outputs provides:

"Golden Nuggets": Specific, evidence-based, segments of vendor text that correspond to high-impact requirements, grounding leadership discussions in facts rather than opinions. BidHawk AI also provides AI justifications and recommendations for engagement - further streamlining the review and negotiation process.
Side-by-Side Comparison: You can quickly compare and evaluate vendor proposals side-by-side at both high and low levels, which focuses critical discussions on even the most complex efforts. This is provided as both high and low-level actionable insights. Leadership gets a great summary for strategic discussions backed with traceable justifications as to “why” - the review team accelerates their reviews and can streamline their documentation based on the analysis results.
Consensus-Driven Rubrics: The data helps eliminate inconsistent proposal scoring by grounding your team with analysis results up front, ensuring everyone evaluates vendors the same way. This includes the ability to generate and deliver effective feedback for the decision justification.

From Weeks to Days: Cutting Review Time

The manual process of extracting and scoring data in Excel is a true bottleneck. BidHawk AI analysis can accelerate review cycles from weeks or months to days - typically 60% faster.

Because the analysis is performed early, it prioritizes which documents and sections require deeper human review regarding compliance. This allows your leadership and review teams to focus only on the conflicts or “subjective” or "needs negotiation" items flagged by the system, rather than grinding through every page manually.

Conclusion

Spreadsheets aren't going away; they are the tool organizations use to make decisions. However, manually typing proposal data into them is a relic of the past. To effectively use Excel for RFP comparisons, treat it as the destination for your data, not the engine for your analysis. Spreadsheets will continue to play a crucial role in vendor reviews and decisions - it just needs good data.

By using BidHawk AI to structure the chaos of proposal text into clean rows and columns, you get a low-cost, pay-as-you-go option for analyzing competitive proposals that fits seamlessly into the tools you already use.

Analogy: Trying to perform a complex RFP evaluation entirely inside Excel is like trying to write a novel using a calculator. While you technically could spell out words using numbers, it is the wrong tool for the job. It is far more effective to analyze the story in a dedicated platform (BidHawk AI) and then use the calculator (Excel) to tally the results and rank the winners.